Why Not EuroKnicks? For Struggling Team, Hope From Abroad

Image

The Knicks signed Mindaugas Kuzminskas of Lithuania, right, one season after drafting Kristaps Porzingis of Latvia.CreditElsa/Getty Images

By Mike Vorkunov

Jan. 30, 2017

Here is one way to measure the evolution of Mindaugas Kuzminskas, the 27-year-old Knicks rookie from Lithuania. Years ago, he was thrilled and a little nervous when he got to meet Arvydas Sabonis, a patriarch of Lithuanian basketball and someone whose towering size and handshake made the 6-foot-9 Kuzminskas feel almost small.

Then, last summer, Kuzminskas had that same feeling again, but this time it was after he had arrived in New York, ready to sign a contract with the Knicks and finally begin his N.B.A. career.

He walked into a room at Madison Square Garden, and there, to his surprise, sat Phil Jackson. These days, Jackson is the embattled president of the Knicks, with more critics than admirers. But to Kuzminskas, who grew up following the N.B.A. from afar, Jackson was the person who won a record 11 championships as an N.B.A. head coach.

So Kuzminskas was sort of speechless. Or as he put it: “I forgot to speak English.’’

Eventually, Kuzminskas remembered, and in a season with the predictable rookie ups and downs, he has nevertheless emerged as an intriguing addition to a team that can use help wherever it can find it.

Kuzminskas’s skills, first developed in his native Lithuania and then refined in recent seasons in Spain, include a strong outside shot and general savviness on offense. His defense is a work in progress, but it’s not far fetched to think he is on his way to becoming a solid role player in the N.B.A. Maybe with the Knicks.

He has come to symbolize an evolution of sorts in the makeup of the Knicks’ roster. The Knicks, though playing in the most international of American cities, were slower than some other N.B.A. teams in looking abroad for talent. In one notorious instance when they did, they selected 7-foot Frédéric Weis in the first round of the 1999 draft — only to have the overmatched Frenchman never play a second for the team.

In 2008, the Knicks brought in Mike D’Antoni, a West Virginian who had made his mark professionally in Italy, to be the team’s new head coach. Shortly afterward, the Knicks, in the first round of the draft, took 6-11 Danilo Gallinari, a 19-year-old from Italy who was playing in Milan.

But the D’Antoni-Gallinari combination didn’t last long. Gallinari was traded away in 2011 as part of the deal that brought Carmelo Anthony to the Knicks from Denver. And D’Antoni was gone a year later, departing because of his conflicts with Anthony.

Image

Kuzminskas played for Lithuania in a 2014 FIBA Basketball World Cup semifinal against the United States.CreditLluis Gene/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Now, Anthony is again in a standoff, this time with Jackson, who appears intent on trading him. But regardless of how that plays out — whether it is Anthony who leaves, or maybe Jackson (or maybe neither) — one thing is different this time around: The Knicks have acquired a European accent that is likely to last for a while.

In addition to Kuzminskas, the Knicks have Kristaps Porzingis, the 7-3 Latvian, who in his second season seems certain to become an N.B.A. star, and Willy Hernangomez, the 6-11 rookie from Spain, who has been asserting himself as a presence in the middle.

Anthony or no Anthony, Porzingis and Hernangomez seem destined to play a lot of minutes together in the Knicks’ frontcourt, and Kuzminskas, often enough, could be alongside them.

In other words, the Knicks, at least in part, could become the EuroKnicks. And why not? Nothing else has worked.

This all comes as more than 100 international players, hailing from 41 countries and territories, were listed on N.B.A. rosters at the start of this season, according to the players association. The Utah Jazz had a league-most seven foreign-born players, while several teams had six. Meanwhile, the Knicks have five foreign-born players in all, with the other two being Maurice Ndour of Senegal and the veteran Sasha Vujacic of Slovenia, although both have very limited roles.

Before this season, the Knicks counted about three dozen foreign-born players in their history, although some, like Patrick Ewing, Dan Gadzuric and Ernie Grunfeld, went to high school and college in the United States.

This surge on their roster — the Knicks had five foreign-born players last season, too, but except for Porzingis, they were of less consequence — more closely aligns them with the league trend. Their front office did not make anyone available to talk about the European contingent, but Clarence Gaines Jr., the Knicks’ vice president of player personnel and a longtime adviser to Jackson, is credited with pushing for Porzingis as the Knicks wrestled over whom to take with the No. 4 pick in the 2015 draft.

In taking a close look at Porzingis, the Knicks also became aware of Hernangomez, since they were teammates on the same Sevilla club. So Hernangomez ended up a Knick, too.

Fran Fraschilla, ESPN’s international basketball analyst, said he agreed with the notion that the Knicks, in the past, were not as interested as other teams in international players.

Image

Harrison Barnes of the Dallas Mavericks drove to the basket against Willy Hernangomez and Kristaps Porzingis last week.CreditTom Pennington/Getty Images

“But now, given the fact that almost a quarter of the league is made up of players from outside the United States, you don’t want to be behind the curve anymore,” Fraschilla said. And the Knicks — whatever other problems they have at the moment — no longer are.

Kuzminskas was plucked out of Spain’s top league, where he had played for three years. His trip to the N.B.A. was far slower than that of Porzingis, who made his N.B.A. debut at age 20, and Hernangomez, who made his at 22.

But Kuzminskas rebuffed several offers to come to the N.B.A. on nonguaranteed contracts that offered only training camp tryouts. Instead, he waited until last summer, when he received his first guaranteed deal, from the Knicks, worth $6 million over two years.

If it took him a while to get to the N.B.A., it is clear that Kuzminskas was almost destined to play basketball. While his father, Vladas, was a national table-tennis champion, his mother, Zita, had been a top-level player on the hardwood. His older brother, Saulius, played professionally in Europe.

“It was already in my blood,” Kuzminskas said.

Zita Kuzminskas was born in Siberia in 1955 after her parents had been deported there from Lithuania, then part of the Soviet Union. Her family returned to Lithuania when she was 4, and she went on to play professionally there as well as for the Lithuanian national team.

And at 61, she still plays in senior tournaments. Her reputation, as a hard-nosed rebounder and defender, has been in the background of her son’s career. Three years ago, Kuzminskas said, he earned a reminder from his coach with the Lithuanian national team after flubbing a play.

‘‘If you were as tough as your mother,’’ Kuzminskas remembered the coach admonishing him, “you would be one of the best players.’’

“My mother, she was a big fighter, a good rebounder, a great defender,’’ Kuzminskas said.

Kuzminskas was a late-blooming player. As a teenager, when many of his peers were starting to show up on N.B.A. radars, Kuzminskas was on the second team at his own school.

He looked for other careers that would keep him close to basketball. At 15, Kuzminskas turned to journalism, interviewing his brother’s teammates for stories. At 16, he earned a referee’s license and worked games in his hometown, from high school to adult leagues.

He is the 11th Lithuanian to make it to the N.B.A. It is an impressive feat for a country of roughly three million people. But in Lithuania, basketball is close to a religion.

“It’s like high school basketball in Indiana,” Fraschilla said. “Basketball is a way of life there. For him to be in the N.B.A. is absolutely huge for Lithuania.”

“It’s the No. 1 one sport by a mile,” said Arturas Karnisovas, a longtime Lithuanian star in Europe and now the assistant general manager of the Denver Nuggets. “We kind of joke around that we took Naismith’s book of basketball and made it our bible.”

Lithuania now has four players in the N.B.A., an achievement that isn’t lost on Karnisovas. The basketball community in Lithuania is small and tight-knit. Karnisovas’s parents know Kuzminskas’s. Kuzminskas is good friends with Domantas Sabonis, who is Arvydas’s son and an Oklahoma Thunder rookie.

And there is this: Twenty-seven years after Sarunas Marciulionis made his debut with the Golden State Warriors as the first Lithuanian player in the N.B.A., Kuzminskas became the first member of the Sarunas Marciulionis Basketball Academy to follow him there.

“If he gets to be a rotation player someday, they will have hit the lottery,” Fraschilla said of Kuzminskas and the Knicks. And, he noted, “without much of a financial investment.’’

Back in Lithuania, Kuzminskas’s parents watch every game, working out a harried routine to bridge the time difference.

It starts with his father waking up at 2 in the morning. When his son enters the game, he runs over to wake up Zita, who works as a teacher. When Kuzminskas goes back to the bench, Zita goes back to sleep again until the next substitution.

“My mother is saying, ‘I still cannot believe I am watching the game and you’re running in front together with all of the guys,’” Kuzminskas said.

Perhaps even more unbelievable would be a Knicks team that is really good again. That would seem to be off in the distance somewhere, but perhaps the EuroKnicks — Porzingis, Hernangomez and Kuzmiskas — will help make it happen. Remember: Nothing else has worked.

Correction:

Because of an editing error, an article on Monday about the Knicks’ embrace of foreign-born players misidentified the native country of forward Maurice Ndour. He is from Senegal, not France.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page D1 of the New York edition with the headline: EuroKnicks? A Rookie Adds to a Belated Trend. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe